If there were ever an underserved market in the PC industry, it's the HTPC niche. We understand that this market is exceptionally tiny when compared to the desktop or notebook landscape, but it's still one that is becoming all the more important with the shift in content distribution from conventional Pay-TV providers to Internet delivery and OTA broadcasts. One could easily replace their existing cable subscription with a fully-equipped HTPC, and if you toss in a Netflix account, you'd really be set.

MSI has today revealed their newest HTPC-centric motherboard, and contrary to what you may expect, it actually supports AMD processors. The new 890GXM-G65 utilizes the AMD 890GX chipset and supports AMD Phenom II CPUs. It also handles DirectX 10.1 and UVD 2.0 multimedia standards, and it also has native support for the new SATA 6Gb/sec transfer interface as well as USB 3.0. Both of those protocols are hard to find these days, so seeing this support blossom on a niche mainboard just makes us grin from ear to ear.

As with many of MSI's desktop motherboards, this one is also equipped with the OC Genie, albeit a "Lite" version. This enables users to easily overclock their system in the BIOS, providing up to a 15% boost in performance by adjusting the CPU and IGP clock speeds. Movie lovers will enjoy the ATI Radeon HD 4290 graphics set as well as the DVI and HDMI ports; there's also support for full 7.1 surround sound, which really rounds out an already excellent HTPC option. So, is it time for movie night, or what?